Aquiles Machado and Saimir Pirgu will sing the role of Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata
22.10.2013
The Venezuelan tenor, who sang in Valencia in Puccini's La Bohème under the direction of Riccardo Chailly, will play the bourgeois Alfredo Germont on the 24th.
Saimir Pirgu, who played this role in Decker's New York production, sings on October 29 and November 2
Valencia. The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía announces that Venezuelan Aquiles Machado and Albanian Saimir Pirgu will sing the role of Alfredo in the upcoming performances of Verdi's La Traviata , the opening title of the 2013-2014 Season.
The Venezuelan tenor will replace Ivan Magrì on Thursday, October 24, who is out of the next three performances due to illness. Magrì, who was forced to withdraw from the opera's premiere midway through the second act due to an acute cervical condition, will rest for the next few days.
Aquiles Machado returns to the Valencian arts center, where he sang in Puccini's La Bohème under the direction of Riccardo Chailly last season. Machado is one of the most sought-after operatic voices in the French and Italian repertoire, with performances in major European and American theaters.
Saimir Pirgu returns to the Palau de les Arts after singing the role of Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 2006, with Lorin Maazel conducting. The Albanian tenor will sing the role of Alfredo Germont in the performances on October 29 and November 2. The 31-year-old tenor is enjoying one of the most promising careers in contemporary opera, having worked with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniele Gatti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, and Franz Welser-Möst, among others.
Pirgu has also shared the stage with some of the leading divas of the moment, such as Natalie Dessay, Joyce DiDonato and Angela Gheorghiu.
A regular in the casts of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Saimir Pirgu played Alfredo Germont last April in the American metropolis alongside Diana Damrau in the same Willy Decker production currently scheduled at the Palau de les Arts, which marked Plácido Domingo's debut as Giorgio Germont.
